It Takes a Cowboy

“C’mon, Blair.” Scott poked the pad with one finger. “Do you really think it matters diddly whether Jeff makes his Q this way or the other way?”

Feeling cornered, she bit her lip. She didn’t think it mattered, really, but she didn’t want to encourage her nephew to flout the rules of penmanship—or any other rules, for that matter.

“You made good grades in school, right? You had to study even when you didn’t want to, and you had to do some things you didn’t necessarily agree with, right?”

“Well, maybe occasionally, but—”

“So why’d you do it? Because it was the right thing to do...or because you wanted the grades so you could get into law school? And you had to work your butt off in law school, I’d imagine, but you did it because you’d decided you wanted to be a lawyer and you weren’t going to let anything hold you back, right?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“You did it for yourself. You didn’t want to flip burgers or run a cash register or other jobs that took less work to prepare for, so you did what you had to do to get what you wanted. That’s all I’m saying to Jeff here. He should do well in school to benefit himself—not to please his teachers or even to please you. For himself.”

“That sounds rather selfish.”

“Self-serving, maybe,” Scott agreed with a shrug. “But in the long run, that’s what it’s all about, right? He’s got to learn to take care of himself, just like I did. Just like you did.”

Jeffrey cleared his throat, reminding them that he was the topic of their conversation. “Some of the kids at school say only dorks care about making good grades. They say it’s no big deal to get Ds and Fs.”

“Yeah, well, we’ll see how they like spending their whole lives asking, ‘Do you want fries with that?’” Scott answered carelessly. “If a guy’s capable of making good grades, he should take advantage of it. Keep his options open for the future, you know?”

“For my own sake, right?”

Scott grinned. “Right.”

“That’s what you mean by working the system.”

“That’s exactly what I mean. Get what you want out of it—and you should want the grades, because you can use them to your advantage later—and then move on. It’s no big deal to write a dorky Q for a couple more weeks if it gets you an A, right?”

“And what if some of the guys call me a nerd?”

“Just smile knowingly and tell them you’re playing the game for your own reasons. Let’s face it, none of the guys at school care about your future. Heck, half of them don’t even care about their own futures. The only real losers are the ones who just dumbly follow the crowd, Jeff. The ones who never learn to think or act for themselves. The ones who’ll destroy their own lives with booze or drugs or stupid behavior just because they worry about what everyone else might say about them. Winners keep their own goals in sight and don’t let anyone hold them back. Like your aunt. It’s pretty cool that she has her own law practice while she’s so young. I’ll bet a lot of her friends from school who weren’t willing to work so hard are pretty jealous of her now.”

Jeffrey eyed Blair’s face speculatively. “She still works awful hard.”

“Yeah. But only because she wants to. You like being a lawyer, don’t you, Blair?”

“Well, yes, but—”

Dismissing her for the moment, Scott turned to the boy. “So what you’ve got to do, Jeff, is decide what you like and go after it. That’s what my friends and I learned at Lost Springs. And the ones of us who took that advice seriously have turned out very well. Most of us are doing exactly what we wanted to do. The ones who ended up in jail were too stubborn to take advantage of a good thing while they had it.”

“So being at Lost Springs was a good thing?”

“For me it was.” Scott glanced at Blair. “For you, it’s a good thing you have your aunt. It’s obvious she cares about you. My grandparents never would have gone to the trouble of arranging a weekend like this for me.”

Jeffrey blinked. “This weekend is for me?”

Blair turned to stare at her nephew. “Of course it is. I thought I’d made that clear.”

“You said we were spending the weekend with a new friend. You said you thought we might have a good time.”

Scott shook his head. “You think your aunt went to all this effort and expense just so she could sit around here and read or cook for us while we fish and play?”

“I thought you might enjoy spending a few days doing guy things,” Blair added with a smile. “Since I don’t fish or tie flies or fly small planes or any of the other cool stuff Scott has entertained you with, I hoped you’d have fun with him.”

She hadn’t known exactly what Scott had in mind for the weekend, of course, but she’d suspected all along that he would know better than she how to entertain a ten-year-old boy. And it seemed she’d been right. Jeffrey appeared to have had a wonderful time today. She hadn’t seen him so relaxed and involved since the day his father had vanished without even a goodbye for him.

“Sounds to me like this weekend has been all for you from the start,” Scott murmured to Jeffrey. “Like I said, you’ve got a pretty good thing with your aunt. If I’d had someone like her to take me in, maybe I wouldn’t have been such a punk.”